TELLURIDE, Colo. — Many sequences in Steve McQueen's new movie, "12 Years a Slave" — the true story of a free black man kidnapped in 1841 and sold to Southern plantation owners — were emotionally exhausting to film. But the British director didn't fully appreciate how wrenching the shoot was for his actors until he was in the editing room, scrutinizing the footage of a rape scene. Michael Fassbender, playing a particularly despicable slave owner named Edwin Epps, was violating his most prized cotton-picking possession, Patsey, played by newcomer Lupita Nyong'o. McQueen's camera was pressed close to Fassbender's face as the actor...

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TELLURIDE, Colo. — Many sequences in Steve McQueen's new movie, "12 Years a Slave" — the true story of a free black man kidnapped in 1841 and sold to Southern plantation owners — were emotionally exhausting to film. But the British director...

NEW YORK -- Walking out of the theater after the official U.S. debut for Steve McQueen’s slavery tour de force “12 Years a Slave” on Tuesday, a viewer could be heard adding skepticism to her admiration.
“I wanted to ask about why there were so few...

The 2013 Fall Movie Preview is a broad snapshot of films opening through Nov. 1. Release dates and other details, as compiled by Oliver Gettell, are subject to change.
SEPT. 6
36 Saints
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When the screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski was a child, he once drew some disturbing pictures in art class — so disturbing the teacher called his parents in for a talk.
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With the big-budget spectacles of summer behind us and the dramas of awards season on the horizon, French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, a foreign-language Oscar nominee for 2010's "Incendies," returns with another dark, weighty film:...

9 MILE POINT, La. — Director Steve McQueen was just a few yards from modern civilization — in this case, an air-conditioned sports utility vehicle that had brought him some 45 minutes from New Orleans — but as he looked around a sprawling plantation...

When a director who never ever blinks takes on a horrific subject, a nightmare in broad daylight is the inevitable result. Welcome, if that is the right word, to the world of "12 Years a Slave."
Based on an 1853 memoir detailing the appalling...

Stage and screen credits abound in Zoe Kazan's family — her parents are the screenwriters Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord and her grandfather is the pioneering director Elia Kazan ("A Streetcar Named Desire"). But the 30-year-old actress and...

You may lament missing “For A Good Time, Call” star Ari Graynor when she spent a few days in Chicago earlier this month. Until you learn that the 29-year-old Boston native, best known for playing drunken mess Caroline in “Nick and Norah’s Infinite...

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Yes, Paul Dano’s real-life girlfriend Zoe Kazan deliberately wrote certain things for him in “Ruby Sparks,” in which the real-life couple plays a couple. The movie is not about them, though.“When I read scenes, it was like, ‘OK, I have to figure out...